


Good Hair

by Fishielicious



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Braids, Gen, dwarf hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fishielicious/pseuds/Fishielicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about how good hair is an important prerequisite to the undertaking of any journey, and on how Kili ended up braidless from the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Hair

When Fili woke up, he could hear Kili moving around in the next room.

The light was already coming through his window. His room faced east. He got the morning sun.

He reached up and rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his tangled hair. Kili was never up before he was. He wondered if he'd slept the night before.

Fili didn't get up right away. He'd got everything ready beforehand. All he had to do was get dressed and go. He didn't leave everything to the last minute, like someone he might mention.

Kili burst into the room with his hair half-braided in a wild halo around his head. "Oh, great, you're up," he said.

"No, I'm not." Fili stretched and folded his arms under his head. Kili sat down at the foot of his bed, on top of his legs. His eyes looked over-bright and buggish. He certainly had not slept.

"Okay, well, now that you're up, could you braid my hair?"

"Can't even braid your own hair and you think you can take back Erebor, do you?" Fili said and braced himself.

Kili pulled the pillow out from under his head and pressed it over his face, which is the reaction Fili had expected.

He and Kili were close in age for dwarf siblings, so close that Fili barely even remembered when he used to be noticeably bigger or stronger or more able to walk and talk than Kili, but he knew those times existed, and he took his responsibilities as the bigger, stronger, and wiser brother very seriously.

He managed to punch Kili in the stomach. On any other morning, that would not have deterred him. But today, Kili let go of the pillow and fell back.

Fili put the pillow under his head and rolled over. "Go away."

"Don't you want to know what time it is?"

"No."

"The sun's already up and we had better leave. Within the hour."

"Wake me up in an hour, then." Usually, Fili would have been the one dragging Kili out of bed and pushing him half-asleep out the door. Right now, he did not much appreciate having his little brother give him pointers about punctuality.

"Fili, please. Wake up. I can't take it anymore."

"What." He folded the pillow over his head to keep the sun out.

"I'm just. I just want to be prepared."

Fili bit his lip to keep from laughing. He guessed it was funny, but he didn't want Kili to know he wasn't annoyed.

"Please will you just wake up and talk to me? And braid my hair, please." He muttered the last part, quickly.

This time, Fili couldn't keep himself from laughing. Kili heard and he started bouncing on the foot of the bed.

"Stop!" Fili tried to sound angry. "Why don't you go ask Mum to do your hair, and while you're at it, ask her to come along with us, too."

He thought Kili would probably start trying to smother him again. But he just stopped bouncing.

Fili pulled his pillow away from his eyes and looked down at Kili, sitting at the foot of his bed. He was staring at the wall.

Fili kicked him from under the covers. "What." He still tried to sound annoyed, but Kili didn't respond, and he dropped the tone. "What's wrong?"

When Kili still didn't respond, he rolled his eyes, groaned, and sat up. "Fine, I'll braid your hair," he said. He stretched, his fingers reaching towards the ceiling, and cracked his shoulder blades.

He was the only one he knew who could crack his shoulder blades.

"Thanks." Kili scooted up the bed and turned his back to Fili.

Fili yawned and stuck his fingers in Kili's thick dark hair. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice still echoing in his head from the yawn. He pulled his fingers through Kili's hair and they caught in dense knots. He yanked through the knots and threw any hair that came out on the floor. Kili didn't complain or wince. No self-respecting dwarf would wince.

"I don't know. Not too much, I guess." Kili reached up and pushed a lock of hair behind his ear.

Fili pushed his hand away. He grabbed two locks of hair starting at Kili's temples and pulled them to the back of his head. "What if I just do these and then separate the top and bottom sections?" He held the two locks in one hand and ran his fingernail through Kili's hair, from the top of one ear across to the other, so the top half of his hair separated from the bottom. "Do you have that clasp?" He held Kili's hair in sections with one hand and groped for a tie on his bedside table with the other.

"Yeah. Yes." Kili pulled a little silver hair clasp out of his pocket and stuck it over his shoulder.

Fili grabbed it with his mouth and held it between his teeth. He found a pin on his table and stuck it through the top half of Kili's hair, then wound the hair around it to hold it out of the way while he combed through the bottom half.

The knots in Kili's hair were big enough that a rodent could hibernate there. Fili didn't know where his comb was--probably at the bottom of his bag somewhere--so he picked through them slowly, with his fingertips. Finally, when the knots were out, or nearly out, Fili smoothed his hands down over the section of hair, separated it into two, and draped the sections over either of Kili's shoulders.

He grunted around the clasp in his mouth and Kili grabbed the sections and held them in place so stray hairs didn't get pulled out while Fili braided the lock starting at Kili's temples.

Braiding was quick. Fili could wake up at 6:55, braid his own hair, and still have time for a cup of tea before he was out the door at 7:00. But this morning, he took his time. He could feel, just under where his hands worked, Kili shiver. The smallest tremors of his flesh. Fili might not have noticed it in anyone else, but sometimes it was like Kili was an extension of his own self. His own flesh with an annoying laugh. His whole life he'd spent with Kili's steady hand and empty head. He noticed him shiver.

Fili smirked to himself. He twisted the strands of hair in his fingers and laid them one over the other. Kili's hair was dark but it felt just the same as his. Thick and coarse.

When he finished the first braid, he held it down at the back of Kili's head with one finger and pinned it down with the hair pin that had been holding the top section of Kili's hair up. When he finished the second braid, he took the clasp out of his mouth and fitted it around the whole top section.

He made sure to keep the clasp tight and combed out the hair that fell under it. He'd left out a few curly pieces of hair that mimicked the shape of Kili's ears and fell in front of them, curly and shorter than the rest. Their short ends would've stuck out of the braids, anyway.

He slapped Kili's shoulder. "There," he said. He threw the sheets off his legs and put his feet on the ground. His feet were bare and the ground was cold.

When he stood up and started thinking about the toilet, Kili lay down, right on top of the braids and metal clasp. Fili just rolled his eyes and by the time he was dressed, Kili was snoring and one of his braids hung loose down by his earlobe.

Fili stood and watched Kili's chest rise and fall. He didn't like to be sentimental, but sometimes, along with being the older and wiser brother, he got stuck worrying, and sometimes feeling like he thought a father ought to feel. Feeling like he shouldn't, like it wasn't fair for him to feel for his brother, whom he was barely older than.

He didn't think like that a lot, but when he did, like now, instead of making him feel bigger or stronger, it just made him feel weak and scared.

He pushed on Kili's chest. "Wake up," he said.

Kili's eyes fluttered open. He looked up at Fili with wide dark eyes totally innocent of anything that had happened in the past forty-five minutes.

He smiled.

Fili pushed him over and sat down on the side of the bed. "Are you going to braid my hair, then?"

Kili did. He sat behind Fili at the edge of the bed and Fili felt his fingers coming through his hair, brushing it back from his temples and tucking locks behind his ears.

Kili moved faster than Fili had. He didn't bother with much pinning or working through knots. His fingers were quick and finished all four of the braids Fili always wore in a few short minutes, pushing Fili's face from side to side as he willed to get the angles he needed. Then, though Fili could have done it himself, though he could have done it all himself, he faced Kili and Kili put the tiny braids in his beard and tied the carved metal holders at the ends.

Fili still couldn't help it. Every time he put the holders in, the first thing he did was shake his head and listen to them clack against each other.

Kili bit his lips to keep from laughing. His eyes moved fast, all over the place. He was looking at Fili and everywhere else at the same time.

It seemed there was something that needed to be said, but neither of them knew what it was.

Fili stood up, grabbed his pack and slung it over his shoulder, and stuck his hand out to his brother.

**Author's Note:**

> After years as a single-fandom type of girl (HP represent), I got sucked into the Hobbit because of these two adorable idiots. And various other dwarves but mostly them. So this is my first, but probably not my last Hobbit fic. Which, god help us, because I am not at all good at High Fantasy style let me tell you, I am out of my comfort zone not adding various slangy phrases every other word. Which is why this dialog has a kind of "minimalistic" style. That, and I don't think either of these two is capable of stringing together anything resembling a complex thought. JK but only kind of.
> 
> And yes I did name this story after an that interlude on Stankonia bc tbh that was the first thing I thought of and then I couldn't think of anything else sorry.


End file.
